Back in the good ol' days -- that would be December -- Alabama's brand new ethics law made it illegal for public officials to ask for or receive anything from those who want to influence them.

"It's a new day in Alabama," then-Gov. Bob Riley proclaimed.

Man. That new day seems short. It's starting to feel a lot like yesterday.

Because last week an Alabama Senate committee, seemingly worried it might have put too much restriction on the influence trade, passed along a bill that would, in a word, turn back the calendar.

That word was ... corruptly.

Right. They want to insert the word "corruptly" into the law in hopes of making it cleaner and clearer. They might make it dirtier instead. And duller.

The law passed in December said a public official shall not "solicit or receive anything for the purpose of influencing official action."

If this bill passes, in the name of clarification, it will say public officials shall not "solicit or receive anything for the purpose of corruptly influencing official action."

So we'll be left to ponder the subtleties of Alabama's corruption with Clintonian precision. Back asking what the definition of "is" is.

What does "corruptly" mean? According to the bill, it is "to act voluntarily, deliberately, and dishonestly to either accomplish an unlawful end or result or to use an unlawful method or means to accomplish an otherwise lawful end or result."

So it will be legal, under the rapidly crumbling ethics law, to take something from those who would influence legislation as long as it does not break a law? That's crystal clear.

Now, I know the Ethics Commission and attorney general's office asked for this change, saying it's needed to defend legal challenges. But it reminds me of that definition of obscenity that has perplexed us for years. The Supreme Court, of course, has ruled the definition of obscenity depends on "contemporary community standards."

Heaven help us if that becomes our definition of "corruptly."

Because the community standard for what is corrupt in Montgomery is -- excluding city halls and county commissions across the state -- far different from other places.

We might just be left with a law that causes more confusion than it clears up. Like an earlier Supreme Court attempt at defining obscenity.

How did Justice Potter Stewart put it?

"I know it when I see it."

Which is ultimately where this new addition to the law could take us.

It is not language that clarifies. This is language that weakens, that makes influence-buying not an issue of black and white, but one of infinite shades of gray. It's one that promises every public official and would-be persuader a claim to plausible deniability.

Forget a new day. It might just be Groundhog Day.

A day in which this new Republican Legislature has merely protected a mechanism for political influence that has existed far too long in Montgomery.